The Clockwork Rocket

When everyone had seen what they’d come here to see, Yalda showed them Pio’s stark terrain, then Sitha’s glorious color trail.

“When will we be able to see the orthogonal stars?” Fatima asked impatiently.

“Not for a while yet,” Yalda replied. “So far we’ve barely changed the angle we make with starlight.” She looked around the chamber at the others. “Is there anything else someone would like to see?”

One of the gardeners, Calogera, gestured toward the barren slope beyond the dome. “I’d like to see the traitor Nino falling past: thrown off the peak of the mountain, on his way down into the engine’s flames.”

Yalda didn’t speak until the cheering stopped, which gave her time to decide that it would be best not to respond at all. “I’ll need to get moving now,” she said. “I have more inspections to perform. I wish you well with your repairs.”

Yalda returned to the navigators’ post. A cell had been constructed in a corner of the room, but the builders had rendered it inconspicuous, the wall blending seamlessly with the original, the triple-bolted door almost invisible. Frido and Babila had been opening the small hatch and tossing in loaves without exchanging a word with the occupant, and with a floor of soil packed with worms to eat the prisoner’s faeces, there really was no reason the door would ever need to be opened.

It took Yalda two days to work up the courage to pull the bolts and step into the cell. They weren’t torturing their prisoner with darkness; the walls here emitted the same mossy red glow as they did outside. Nino sat, unrestrained, in a corner; he did not look up as she closed the door behind her and approached.

Yalda sat on the floor in front of him. “Is there anything you want to say to me?” she asked.

“I’ve told you everything,” Nino replied dully. “If there are other saboteurs, the Councilor never mentioned them to me.”

“All right. I believe you.” Why would Acilio have told this man anything, beyond the instructions he needed to complete his own task? “Your confession is complete. So what now?”

Nino kept his eyes on the floor. “I’m at your mercy.”

“Maybe,” Yalda said. “But you must have your own wishes.”

“Wishes?” Nino made it sound like an infant’s nonsense-word.

“If you had a choice,” Yalda persisted, “what would your fate be?”

Nino took a while to respond. “Never to have listened to the Councilor. Never to have got into debt. Never to have seen a second sun in the sky.”

“That’s not what I meant.” Yalda had imagined the conversation proceeding very differently. “You’re here, you’ve done what you’ve done, we can’t change that. So what now? Do you want an end to it?”

Nino looked up at her, shocked. “Nobody wants to die,” he said. “It’s what I expect, but I’m not going to beg you for it. I’m ashamed of what I did, but I haven’t lost all dignity.”

“No?” Yalda spread her arms to take in the cell. “What dignity remains for you here?”

Nino glared at her, then touched his forehead. “I still have my mind! I still have my children!”

“You mean, you have your memories?”

“I have my past,” Nino said, “and their future. My brother will struggle without the Councilor’s second payment, but I know he’ll do his best.”

“So… you’ll just sit here and imagine their lives?”

“With pleasure, for as long as I’m able,” Nino replied defiantly.

Yalda was ashamed. She had tried to convince herself that she’d be offering him mercy, but in truth that logic was as odious as Acilio’s. She had once believed that she faced a lifetime in chains herself, convinced that no one with the power to help her would ever give a thought to her plight. In the darkness of her cell, with Tullia’s encouragement still fresh in her mind, she’d guessed the shape of the cosmos, no less—but robbed of any further companionship she doubted that her mental discipline would have persisted for long. Nino, too, had the life of the mind to sustain him for now, but it wouldn’t last forever.

Yalda left him. She stood at her desk, pretending to pore over a star chart, ignoring Frido’s enquiring glances.

What did she owe the crew of the Peerless? Safety, above all else, but Nino’s death wasn’t necessary for that. The satisfaction of revenge? It would please most of them to see him die, but did she owe them that pleasure?

And what did she owe Nino? He had been weak and foolish, but had he forfeited his right to live? When Acilio had dragged her into his stupid feud, her own pride had lost Antonia her freedom. Who was she to declare that Nino’s crime was so great that he deserved no mercy whatsoever?

But if she did spare his life, that would not be the end of it. If she kept him locked up, she couldn’t banish him from her thoughts and pretend that his welfare and sanity were not her responsibility.

She stared down at the chart, at the few crosses marked near the beginning of a course that stretched past the edge of the map. What did she owe the generations to come, who’d follow the path set by her bearings? The hope of a notion of justice less crude than their ancestors’, where a few well-placed bribes and a sergeant’s whims could bury anyone in a dungeon for life. She owed it to them to set her sights higher.

Yalda looked over at Frido. “There isn’t going to be an execution,” she said.

Frido wasn’t happy, but he understood from her demeanor that there was no point arguing. “It’s your decision to make,” he replied. “Do you want him sent up the mountain?”

Yalda said, “Not while I’m down here.”

“You still need to question him?”

“No. He has nothing left to tell us about Acilio.”

Frido was confused. “So why keep him here?”

Yalda noticed that they’d woken Babila with their shouting, but she needed to hear this too.

“If I’m going to take his freedom away,” she said, “then it’s up to me to deal with the consequences. I’m going to need to find a way to keep him busy.”

“Busy how?” Frido protested. “He’s a farmer, not an artisan; you can’t turn his cell into a workshop.”

Yalda said, “I wasn’t thinking of anything so ambitious.”

Babila rose from her bed. “Then what?”

Yalda said, “Where do we start with anyone? If our records are correct, he’s never been to school. So the first thing is to teach him how to read and write.”

15

When the world disappeared into the glare of the sun, Yalda was relieved; the long farewell was finally over. A stint later, when she returned to the observation chamber, even Gemma had vanished to the naked eye. Through the theodolite’s telescope, sun and erstwhile planet were just another double star, a bright primary and its fainter companion, with fringes of violet and red destined to spread into a full-blown color trail. If any Hurtlers were lighting up the skies of her old home, sheer distance had rendered those threads of color too faint to discern at all.

Yalda made her measurements and calculated the adjustments needed to keep the